The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - October 25, 2024
This bar, poured early in 2020, contains the four-millionth oz of gold produced at the Pogo Mine in Alaska.
With recent upgrades and repairs, the Pogo mill has the capacity to process 1.4 million metric tons of ore per year.
Northern Star Resources Ltd. Oct. 24 reported that, despite the mill being down for more than a month for maintenance and repairs, its Pogo Mine in Alaska produced 56,131 oz of gold during the third quarter.
Over the first nine months of this year, Pogo poured 206,641 oz of gold, putting the company's only operation outside of Australia on pace to top 280,000 oz in 2024.
The third-quarter shutdown at Pogo was preplanned to carry out a normal relining of the mill, plus a major rebuild of one of the motors. Given this scheduled downtime, the company only expected the high-grade underground mine in Alaska to produce 50,000 oz of gold during the third quarter of calendar year 2024 and the first quarter of Northern Star's fiscal year 2025.
During an Oct. 24 call with investors and analysts, Northern Star Managing Director and CEO Stuart Tonkin commended its Alaskan team for the "fantastic achievement" of successfully completing the major mill rebuild and still delivering a strong quarter of gold production.
The mill at Pogo processed 262,643 metric tons of ore averaging 7.7 grams per ton gold during the second quarter, compared to 381,643 metric tons of ore averaging 8.5 g/t gold during the previous quarter.
While the second quarter mill throughput and grades were particularly robust, resulting in a record 92,078 oz of gold being produced at Pogo over that period, the mill's performance provides a sense of what the Alaska mine is capable of moving forward.
With recent upgrades and repairs, the Pogo mill has the capacity to process 1.4 million metric tons of ore per year.
The five-week shutdown of the mill provided the underground mining crews time to build a stockpile of ore that will help ensure there is plenty of feed to keep the refurbished mill running at its full potential.
While the nameplate throughput capacity for the Pogo mill is 1.3 million metric tons per year, or 325,000 metric tons per quarter, Northern Star believes the mine is now positioned to consistently run at around 1.4 million metric tons per year, or 350,000 metric tons per quarter.
With the average reserve grade at Pogo at around 8 g/t gold and mill recovery rates running at around 86%, the Alaska operation is now positioned to achieve the company's production target of over 300,000 oz of gold per year.
And the company's CEO is happy with what he is seeing from Pogo since the completion of the mill maintenance and repairs.
"The Pogo mill continues to operate at very good rates this quarter on the outset of the completed millworks, and we have established our guidance for the plant to operate at a targeted throughput now above 1.4 million metric tons per annum," he said during the investor call.
With indications of a strong finish to the year, Pogo's gold output will likely push above 280,000 oz for 2024 and has the potential to push closer to 300,000 oz.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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